The Poetic Edda Index

Fafnismol
Sigurth spake:
28. "Better is heart | than a mighty blade
For him who shall fiercely fight;
The brave man well | shall fight and win,
Though dull his blade may be.
29. "Brave men better | than cowards be,
When the clash of battle comes;
And better the glad | than the gloomy man
Shall face what before him lies.
30. "Thy rede it was | that I should ride
[26. In the manuscript stanzas 26-29 stand after stanza 31, which fails to make clear sense; they are here rearranged in
accordance with the Volsungasaga paraphrase.
28-29. Almost certainly interpolated from some such poem as the Hovamol. Even the faithful Volsungasaga fails to
paraphrase stanza 29.]
{p. 380}
Hither o'er mountains high;
The glittering worm | would have wealth and life
If thou hadst not mocked at my might."
Then Regin went up to Fafnir and cut out his heart with his sword, that was named Rithil, and then he
drank blood from the wounds. Regin said:
31. "Sit now, Sigurth, | for sleep will I,
Hold Fafnir's heart to the fire;
For all his heart | shall eaten be,
Since deep of blood I have drunk."
Sigurth took Fafnir's heart and cooked it on a spit. When he thought that it was fully cooked, and the
blood foamed out of the heart, then he tried it with his finger to see whether it was fully cooked. He
burned his finger, and put it in his mouth. But when Fafnir's heart's-blood came on his tongue, he
understood the speech of birds. He heard nut-hatches chattering in the thickets. A nut hatch said:
32. "There sits Sigurth, | sprinkled with blood,
And Fafnir's heart | with fire he cooks;
[30. Something has evidently been lost before this stanza. Sigurth clearly refers to Regin's reproach when he was digging
the trench (cf. note on introductory prose), but the poem does not give such a passage.
Prose. Rithil ("Swift-Moving"): Snorri calls the sword Refil ("Serpent").
32. That the birds' stanzas come from more than one source {footnote p. 381} is fairly apparent, but whether from two or
from three or more is uncertain. It is also far from clear how many birds are speaking. The manuscript numbers II, III, and
IV in the margin with numerals; the Volsungasaga makes a different bird speak each time. There are almost as many
guesses as there are editions. I suspect that in the original poem there was one bird, speaking stanzas 34 and 37. Stanza 38
is little more, than a repetition of stanza 34, and may well have been a later addition. As for the stanzas in Fornyrthislag
(32-53 and 35-36), they apparently come from another poem, in which several birds speak (cf. "we sisters" in stanza 35).
file:///C|/WINDOWS/Desktop/sacred-texts/neu/poe/poe24.htm (7 of 10) [4/8/2002 10:08:09 PM]